Photo: Iowa National Guard
(CAMP DODGE, Iowa) -- Iowa's Gold Star Military Museum is opening a new exhibit based on efforts of Vietnam era military wives.
League of Wives: Vietnam's POW/MIA Allies and Advocates is a traveling exhibit which we be at Camp Dodge thru the end of August of 2022.
Curator Michael Vogt says it describes how wives of missing Vietnam soldiers worked quietly behind the scenes to pressure the U-S government to find their husbands and bring them home.
The exhibit features 18 illustrated panels and related artifacts tracing the story of the women who formed The National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. They became the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands’ freedom and to account for missing military men by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a media campaign, holding covert meetings with antiwar activists, attempting negotiations with the North Vietnamese, and encoding messages in letters to their imprisoned husbands.
Ms. Heath Hardage Lee is the opening event’s guest speaker. Her 2019 book, The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took on the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam, has been optioned for a feature film. Ms. Lee is also the curator of the exhibit.